How to become 1% better everyday | Atomic Habits Book Review (by James Clear)
Do you want to become 1% better at anything you want each day? Do you struggle to break your bad habits and create new good ones? If the answer is yes – this review was made for you! My name is Weronika, and welcome to our new YouTube series where we explore The Investor’s Podcast Network’s favorite books. The Investor’s Podcast Network is all about investing, where you can find all kinds of guidelines and ideas on how to grow financially and personally. In his book Atomic Habits, with over 3 million copies sold, James Clear breaks down the 4
steps of an easy way to implement new habits and break the old ones, he also explains The Four Laws of Behavior Change, shedding light on how exactly to change your daily habits. He backs up the mechanism of our behaviours in each stage of making or breaking a habit by including various research results, social experiments, and tests derived from psychology and neuroscience . The book Atomic Habits provides a handful of practical how-to tips on how to improve your self-development journey, to share that at first these small changes lead to bigger wins that multiply to a degree
that outweighs the cost of their initial investment. I would like to share my top 6 tips that I got out of this book and that
daily routine consists of multiple habits, some help us grow, become healthier or more productive and some can be harmful to our physical or mental health. Nevertheless, we seldom notice them because they seem so insignificant. In contrast, the backbone of Clear’s book is for everyone to realize how much all of these universal, tiny habits, impact our everyday life and influence our relationships, career, health and feeling of fulfillment. This is why he claims it’s vital to understand that small daily routine changes here and there can actually make a difference. If you can get 1 % better at
anything you want each day, after a year you can see a tremendous difference and end up being 37 times better at something. Same goes for repeating mistakes everyday and drifting away from our original goal by doing things that don’t lead us to it. You just continue the vicious cycle over and over everyday if you don’t take this first step of noticing what you need to stop doing. Habits shape your Identity. Now, we all know how difficult it can be to start a new habit, break an old one or just continue doing something we really want
to do, but always seem to have a million reasons not to do it, perhaps because we don’t feel like it will help us get anywhere closer to our goals. First of all, it’s crucial to realize that habits appear to be insignificant until you cross this magical, critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. Just like when practicing piano and at first you feel like you’re just bad at it, but then suddenly, after countless tries, you actually feel more comfortable and self-confident with it. Thanks to repeating this activity so many times, you notice the positive
impact of being consistent and patient. Breakthrough moments are usually the result of multiple previous actions. Second of all, the best form of motivation is when a habit becomes a part of your identity. When you are committed to your beliefs, you are proud of what you do, you are the most motivated to perform in a certain way, thus maintaining your habits which are associated with these feelings and beliefs. If you want to be a musician, you practice playing an instrument you like. Practicing music will lead you to become who you want to become and incorporate music
into your identity. This is why this is the most effective way to change your habits, just by focusing on who you wish to become and not on what you want to achieve. Decide the type of person you want to be, and then prove it to yourself in small steps. 4 steps of how a brain creates a habit. James Clear states that habits are the compound interest of self-improvement, and just like the same way money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. The interesting part is why your brain wants
to repeat an activity many times so it becomes automatic. The process of building a habit can be divided into 4 simple steps: Cue, Craving, Response and Reward. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior of predicting and looking for a reward. Then, there is a craving, which is the motivational force behind every habit. If we really crave something, we have a reason to act. Then there is a step no. 3 which is the response. The response is the actual habit you perform depending on how motivated you are to engage your mental or physical effort
in it. The last step, no. 4 is a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit. They bring us satisfaction and they teach us for the future. It has been proven that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated. The 4 Laws of Behavior Change. If you ever struggled to figure out how to approach making changes in your daily routine to result in reaching your goals easier and quicker, this is a step-by-step pattern to follow: Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make
it easy. Make it satisfying. To make it obvious, you need to be aware of your behavior and realize what you are doing. You could make lists or scoreboards tracking your activity. You could also link one habit with another one being performed right afterward so you connect them and don’t forget about them. If you want to break a bad habit, the first thing you should do is to be on the lookout for it, and once you spot it and are aware of it, you can do something about it. To make it attractive you can create a
motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before performing a difficult habit so your brain builds this correlation for the future. If you want to break a bad habit, you should do the inversion of the second law by reframing your mindset. You should focus on highlighting the benefits of avoiding your bad habits. To make it easy, it is important to design your environment, whether we talk about the actual room you’re in and configuring it in a way your brain gets proper cues to perform the right way, or whether we talk about being around people who
motivate you to perform your habits. You could for example join a team of people gathering to do the same activity as you want to do, this way you will stay energized, motivated, and on track with implementing your habits. The same goes for breaking a bad habit – you redesign the environment you’re in so you don’t get cues and people who demotivate you. For example, you could clean up your working space right after you’re done with work. This way you prepare a clear and clean space for the future you, for the next time you want to
work without being overwhelmed. Sometimes we are not even aware how much our environment, like our social circle, influences our approach and decisions which we were taught to mimic ever since we were small kids. Maximizing the odds of success. Many of us ask ourselves a question: what is it that I’m good at that could lead me to high returns? If we talk about business, career, and making money or hobbies, we search for something we enjoy doing and get pleasure from doing, however still many of us don’t succeed in finding it. The very secret to maximizing the
odds of success, according to James Clear, is choosing the right field of competition. You become more motivated, and the habits are easier to perform and more satisfying to stick with when they align with your abilities and predispositions. To find the areas of your natural abilities to outstanding performance, you need to ask yourself what is what feels fun to you but like work to others, what makes you lose track of time so the world fades away when you do your thing, or finally what provides you greater returns than an average person. Once you specify that, you
are able to spot a field of interest or a skill set that could only bring value and make your performance stand out significantly compared to others. However, on the other hand, if you can’t win by being better, win by being different – which means that if you feel like there is no space for you to join and no path to follow, create one! Don’t be afraid to be unique and create a field or activity you feel great at and you love doing – this way you will get more motivation by being a pioneer and leading
the way for others in the future! This is a great way to stick to whatever you make your habits because you grow, notice the progress of evolution, and possibly become an authority at some point. Creating a good habit and breaking a bad one. Most of us want to start new habits but don’t know where to begin or we want to get rid of the bad ones which take control of our routine. Well, if you struggle with either of them first you need to embrace that there are many different ways to address the same underlying motive.
For example, if you smoke cigarettes with the purpose of feeling that you belong, and fit in the group of colleagues at work, you actually harm yourself. You smoke even though you hate it and it causes serious consequences to your future health. The underlying motive is to be a part of a community and feel involved in a group. In fact, there are different ways to address the same motive – instead, you could gather a group of colleagues to play sports together and take over the leadership role to motivate the group and make a positive change. This
way, you get to break a bad habit and create a new one all at once. And the best part is, your underlying motive and desire are fulfilled! Another example could be that you feel you spend too much money right after you get your salary paid out. You feel that you want to belong in your community and social circle, so you spend on artificial, prestigious goods which at the end of the day bring no value to your life. Instead, you could put 20% of your disposable income in your savings account. This way you will at least
start taking control of your spending right at the moment you receive your check rather than throwing a big chunk of it away under peer or social pressure. This way, by such a tiny change, you become more hands-on with your finances and may have taken the first steps to maintain the control of systematic monthly planning of your household finances.
